Foodie Amsterdam: a hit and a big miss

Whenever we visit Amsterdam, we like to get a rijstaffel — a Netherlandish-Indonesian tasting feast of 25 or so small dishes, served in three waves from mildly spiced to hot. It is wonderful to dig into the little dishes, savor tender meats in complex sauces of peppers, vinegars, coconut milk, lemon grasses, curries, citrus, fermented pastes, more — this one tangy, this sweet, this charred and smokey, this one dark and roasty. The pleasure of discovery and the pleasure of the palette and the ambling nature of the meal, as tray after tray of little plates arrives, make great rijstaffel more of an experience than a dinner. At a good one, time seems to suspend a little and the whole evening takes on a happy charm.

But not this time. Finding, sadly, that the restaurants we enjoyed in our visits 10 and 20 years ago were no more, we opted for one recommended by New York Times food critic and PBS food show host Mark Bittman. I’d watched and read the cranky Bittman often — he seemed to know his stuff, has eaten and written about food and ingredients from all over the world, and I figured that I would not go wrong with his advice. But I did.

The restaurant he recommended — Tempo Doeloe — fell absolutely flat. The meats were bland and tough, tasting for the most part as if they had been boiled in one big vat of broth and then placed in ramekins with some thin, particularly unspectacular sauces spooned over them. The meal was not served in stages, but was brought out all at once. There were frozen vegetables and canned shrimp, tasteless soggy tomatoes. Too many dishes smelled and tasted the same as others. There wasn’t one thing that surprised or delighted me, not one thing that was any better than takeout I could get in Long Beach. I suspect that Tempo Doeloe was aimed smack at the American family seated at the table next to us who asked for a rice table of all mild dishes and especially no goat meat, but it was a total miss for us. And as this was the splurge meal of the trip — and because I have tasted what a real rijstaffel can be — it was a real let down.

It did provide us with a great excuse to walk around old Amsterdam at sunset and that was the highlight of the evening.

Earlier this week, we had a foodie hit when we had some really good Belgian-style fried potatoes with traditional mayonnaise sauce. In the densely touristed shopping area off the Helligeweg at Voetboogstraat 13 is Vleminckx Sausmeesters, a Beglian Frittes stand that claims to have been in business since 1887 and at this location since 1958. There’s always a line for these perfectly-cooked-crisp-on-the-outside-tender-on-the-inside potatoes that are fried in quickly-consumed batches and served in paper cones with a generous helping of one of a dozen or more sauces — from traditional mayo, to ketchup, satay and sambal. We picked up a couple of small orders and were not disappointed. (In fact it was our second visit to the stand — Josh brought us there on our first day in.) A worth-the-wait cone of street food perfection.